Use CDN

I am pretty sure most of iPhone owners have been struggling with AT&T service. Frankly I’m personally fed up with them. We have two iPhones 3G in the family and soon after Apple started selling iPhone 3GS we noticed huge problems with AT&T service.
First symptoms were when we were like in area with high signal strength, but friends and colleagues could not reach us. Our iPhones simply do not ring.

Another one is when we could not place a call or calls drop. Actually at those periods all 3G data communications do not work. Neither you can browse the Internet nor read e-mail, nothing works until phone is either restarted or network reset by putting in airplane mode and back.

So after struggling for a while I have opened a ticket with AT&T secondary tier support engineer and after few days they got back to me telling that it is known problem and that AT&T is working on fixing it and that they’d be updating cellular stations software some time in October.

In meanwhile they recommended to turn off all push notifications on my iPhones. Well I did not have those enabled anyway. They said that it is known that if any data comes in to iPhone while in the middle of phone call it could cause the dropped calls. That last statement got me wondering whether the fix that they are going to apply in October is really just for that or whether it would fix all other issues as well.

Also AT&T rep suggested that sometimes just replacing SIM card helps with the issue. Well I have two iPhones purchased in totally different places and at totally different times and they both have issues and also friends with 3GS iPhones having same problems. All of that suggests that it is not a problem with my particular SIM. I am so frustrated with them that if they will not fix an issue very soon I am switching to another provider.

It looks like AT&T is having big problem with their network being overloaded. I have heard from another friend that his company completely stopped using AT&T laptop wireless access adapters and switched to Verizon since AT&T ones became useless lately.

I suggest to everybody who have any problem with AT&T service contact AT&T customer support right now and demand urgent resolution. We pay too much money to let it slide!!!

It is not very often we can really recommend good car mechanic. But today I would like to do just that. I have almost always been taking my cars to Curry’s Auto Service in their Dulles, VA location until they decided to close that branch.
I have been looking for competent alternative in the area and I think I found one.

The place is called Road Race Technologies. I took one of my cars there for alignment and I am happy with the result so far. And it was just $110 which is also cheaper than I paid before to do the same in both Curry’s or BMW of Sterling. The guy on the phone told me that they usually take BMW’s to next door shop for alignment, but I did not mind since the price was right anyway. When I came to pick up my car that evening I saw that all they were working was BMW cars. Their regular hour cost is $95. Which I think is reasonable now.
Check them out if you are in the Dulles, VA area. I’d like to see more review of them. So far I have only found one on Yelp.

And one thing that I did not especially like is that they open at 8:30 am which is kind of late if you let’s say want to drop your car there in there morning and still get to work on time to some place like in DC.

A cutaway view of a car final drive unit which contains the differential

I watched the funny scene the other day. My neighbor minivan fell off the jack. It fell hard on its belly when the guy removed the flat tire. It could ended up very bad if somebody got hurt. Luckily just van’s belly had couple of scratches and that was it.

So guess why it fell off the jack?

You guessed it right – the human error. Or I’d call it stupidity in this case. The owner of the minivan did not engage the parking break nor he ensured by any other means that the car would not roll.

The guy was changing one of the front tires of front wheel drive Toyota Sienna. Once the flat tire was off the ground, lugs were removed and he shook the tire the minivan rolled back a little bit, just enough to fell off the jack.

The lesson there for owner was that the differential lets one wheel roll freely once another wheel is off the ground even if transmission is in “P” (Park).

Did you ever think how exciting it would be to fly out to Germany to personally pick up your own brand new car at famous BMW Welt?

BMW has European delivery program that gives you a chance to pick up your car in Germany, drive it around the Europe while having unforgettable experience of European vacation, also to enjoy lack of speed limits on autobahns .

By picking your car in Europe you usually are ably to get it for around 7% less compared to what you’d pay if you picked it at your local dealer. But most people I talked to usually spend the difference on the trip.

BMWBLOG made series of videos about one of such trips to Europe. Enjoy.

I just checked out that first post from a while ago when I purchased the Bentley’s BMW e39 manual because I had put eBay custom search over. What a difference. It looks like now everybody is selling those manuals on eBay for $124 or so.

I just checked few other obviouse places to get those books from and they are all cheaper than $124.

I just don’t understand how those other more expensive places can make any money at all when somebody is selling for 20% less.

Anyway here is the one from Amazon selling this kit for $107 plus shipping.

The U.S. Department of Transportation encourages consumers to file an official complaint of record with them when the suspect safety issues with their model car. This information will be entered into National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) vehicle owner’s complaint database and used with other complaints to determine if a safety-related defect trend exists.

Your complaint is important in determining if further action is needed to investigate the possibility of a recall. Continue reading →